One tiny beacon of hope that emerged during [the World War II] period was the Kindertransport, a train service that took Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution, and rehomed them predominantly in British homes that had been volunteered by British families. These poor frightened children were separated from their parents and travelled alone, some just babies, guided by a network of volunteers to safety. They represented a fraction of the children in peril, the majority of whom never made it out of that horror alive. Which is where development of Night Of The Broken took shape. The idea of a Jewish Kindertransport child who had grown up in England to become a doctor in the 1960s. What kind of person had she become? What was her legacy? How did she feel about surviving whilst so many of her people had died?
The story of an organised rescue effort to save children from Nazi occupation is coming to Ledbury this month. Ledbury Amateur Dramatic Society, known as LADS, will be performing Kinderstransport from Thursday, October 20 to Saturday, October 22 at the Market Theatre.
In the play, nine-year-old Eva ends up in Manchester and when her parents fail to escape she changes her name and begins the process of denial of her roots. It is only years later when her own daughter discovers some old letters that Eva is forced to confront the truth about her past.
Tickets are £11 (£8 for students) and are available from the Market Theatre box office.
UNCW’s Theatre Department kicks off its 2022-2023 season with Diane Samuel’s Kindertransport. The production looks at the life of a young child who is forced to leave Nazi-occupied Germany and sent to live with a foster family in Britain, uncertain of what her future will hold.
Director, Dr. Charles Grimes, says as we read news stories and think about what’s happening now, this story becomes very relevant. Grimes explains it reminds you that everything you read about in the headlines, is actually happening or happened to an individual somewhere.
“Telling us something about how easy it is to lose something as a person, to the forces of history. And it’s a smart play about how people in society kind of accept what’s going on even if that’s leading in the direction of fascism or inhumanity. And it just shows how those forces affect individual people.”
Kindertransport is in the Mainstage Theatre at the UNCW Cultural Arts Building. Shows run Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2, starting tonight and ending on October 9th.
KTA Board member Kindertransportee Ilse was brilliant, highlighting the work of the Quakers and the importance of hearing refugee’s stories on the panel: NO LONGER UNIMAGINABLE: A Conversation with Holocaust Survivors.
To watch: https://bit.ly/PBSTalk
The KTA mourns the death of Barbara Winton. Dear friend, staunch advocate for refugees today, writer, founder of the Sir Nicholas Winton Trust to support her father’s legacy, work and spirit. She will be deeply missed.
To quote her twitter bio “pessimistic optimist, previously optimistic pessimist. Supporting today’s refugees while talking about yesterday’s – Kindertransport & my father Nicholas Winton”
On the eve of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the KTA remembers the generous people of the UK who opened their homes, schools, hostels, farms to homeless Kindertransport children. We invite KTA members to submit their memories, thoughts and stories of Queen Elizabeth and Prince/King Charles for the Spring issue of the Kinderlink.
One Kindertransportee has written “During my life in England, public celebrations which had royal participation created an atmosphere of unity which thrilled me. Being a refugee I felt an outsider – on the whole, at that time, the British were suspicious of foreigners.”
A memorial has been unveiled to mark the arrival of 10,000 children to the UK who sought safety from Nazi Germany before the start of World War Two.
The bronze statue by artist Ian Wolter has gone up at Harwich quayside.
The first children arrived at the Essex port on 2 December 1938, with some taken to London and others to local holiday camps such as Dovercourt Bay.
Guests at the unveiling of the statue included more than 30 refugees who arrived on the Kindertransport.
There’s a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yu7aVy6sXU&ab_channel=5News
Production is underway on the biopic, One Life, which tells the story of Nicholas Winton and the Czech Kindertransport.
Celebrated theatre artist, Jeanmarie Simpson, known for her beautifully innovative stagings of Shakespeare, contemporary plays, adaptations, and her own original works, is set to begin rehearsals September 6th in Las Vegas for a November 3rd opening.
A statue has been erected of a British war hero compared with Oskar Schindler for his efforts to save hundreds of children destined for Nazi death camps.
Trevor Chadwick helped Sir Nicholas Winton rescue 669 youngsters from Czechoslovakia ahead of World War Two.
He was dubbed the “Purbeck Schindler” in reference to him being from Purbeck in Dorset, and the statue is being erected in his hometown of Swanage.
Every child who came over as part of the Kindertransport initiative had a story to tell and in Diane Samuel’s 1993 play Kindertransport we’re told the story of Eva Schlesinger who’s taken in by Lil and moved to Manchester unable to speak the language of her new country of residence and confused by why she was sent away by the parents who loved her. The play, although fictitious, is based on some real Kindertransport children and their stories have been woven together to produce Kindertransport at the South London Theatre and is the debut production from Everything’s Rosie.
Kenneth Appel, grew up in Nazi Germany, was expelled from school when the Nazis rose to power, suffered at the hands of his former school friends, until he fled with the Kindertransport to Britain. Having arrived in Britain, he witnessed the London Blitz in 1940 and eventually put himself through university and began research at a laboratory that was working to develop penicillin.
Lisl was born in Vienna, Austria, on December 20, 1927. In 1938, Lisl’s parents made the difficult decision to put her and her brother Walter on the “Kindertransport” – a British rescue operation that saved 10,000 Jewish children. Despite a seven year separation, this decision saved their lives.
After reuniting with her parents in NYC, Lisl met and married her husband who had also escaped from Vienna. In 1959 they moved to Clearwater.
While active in numerous community organizations, it was the Florida Holocaust that was her passion.
Schick’s story begins when she was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1927 to Paul and Charlotte Porges, according to a news release. During the Nazis’ occupation of Austria, her parents put Schick and her brother, Walter, on a rescue train called the Kindertransport. The rescue train offered refuge to almost 10,000 Jewish children ages seven to 11 in England.
“My parents gave birth to me twice. Once when I was born and once when they put me on the Kindertransport,” Schick said in the release.
After moving to Florida, Schick worked with The Florida Holocaust Museum to ensure the Holocaust would never be forgotten and to teach its crucial life lessons.
The British government had decided that if it entered the war, it would evacuate children from London (which was bound to be the target of enemy bombs) to the safety of the English countryside.
Grunfeld knew how traumatic it would be for these children, who had recently been torn away from their parents. Many would never see them again, although at that time, the kids all still harbored hopes that their parents would arrive at any minute. Now she would have to take them away from their foster families and settle them in yet another strange house.
The code word for the evacuation, which Grunfeld hoped she would never hear, was “Pied Piper tomorrow,” which would mean that all schools had to prepare the children for evacuation the following day.
The code word was broadcast on the radio on Thursday, Aug. 31, 1939. The following day, Grunfeld boarded one of the eight buses filled by the pupils of her school. Only when they were all on board did the officer in charge tell her she was headed to Shefford. This was the first indication she had of where she and 400 Jewish children would be spending their lives until the end of the war.
A memorial is being created for a UK port where thousands of children began arriving after they fled Nazi Germany before World War Two broke out.
The Kindertransport to Harwich, Essex, started after the anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938.
The first children arrived by ferry at Harwich, on 2 December 1938, with some taken to London and others to local holiday camps such as Dovercourt Bay.
The bronze statue will be unveiled on Harwich quayside in September.
A plaque has been unveiled in tribute to a family who took in 10 Jewish boys fleeing the Nazis.
Thousands of children escaped to the UK on what was known as the Kindertransport during the 1930s as Adolf Hitler rose in influence.
Paul and Edith Arnstein cared for the boys at their home in Gloucester.
Several tales about world war ii concentrate on the war’s tragedies and depravity. “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,” on either side, celebrates humanity’s love, charity, and steadfastness in several of history’s biggest catastrophes.
This weekend, two British institutions — Queen Elizabeth and Paddington Bear — charmed the world in a surprise skit that kicked off the Platinum Party at the Palace tribute concert outside Buckingham Palace.
But many viewers might not have known the real origins of the ursine celebrity who hails from “darkest Peru” — yet was actually inspired by Jewish refugee children.